Work on 9/11 memorial park begins

Relatives of passengers on United flight 93, the hijacked 9/11 plane which crashed in a field after an on-board fight for the controls, have broken ground on a permanent memorial park in their honour.

By Tom Leonard in New York

10:00PM GMT 08 Nov 2009

At a ceremony at the weekend that was led by Ken Salazar, the US Interior Secretary, 39 relatives of the 40 passengers and crew who died turned shovels of soil in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

"Let's roll," said Mr Salazar, borrowing the phrase of Todd Beamer – "Let's roll" – the passenger who is believed to have led the charge down the plane to attempt to wrest the plane's controls from the terrorists.

The government intends to have the first phase of a national monument completed by September 11, 2011 – the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

The 9/11 Commission believe the terrorists seized the plane, travelling from Newark in New Jersey to San Francisco, with the intention of flying it into the White House or the Capital.

Instead, they crashed in the field, killing all on board, after passengers reacted to news of the other plane attacks by attempting to storm the flight deck.

Gordon Felt, whose brother, Edward, was one of the dead, said it had been a "Herculean effort" to get as far as the groundbreaking.

Critics attacked the size and cost of the project. Acquiring the necessary 2,200 acres of land from some owners had been difficult and there were claims that the crescent shape of the original memorial design honoured the terrorists.

"We made it. Not to our goal, not to the finish line. Certainly not any semblance of closure, but nevertheless, we made it to the next milestone of our journey," said Mr Felt.

Ed Rendell, Pennsylvania's governor, said the memorial will tell of "ordinary citizens bound by a sense of urgency and action that changed the history of the world".

Mr Salazar said the victims did something profoundly democratic which the terrorists could never understand by taking a vote on whether to fight for control of the plane.

The initial phase represents the vast majority of the park and will cost $58 (£35 million), of which $30 million will come from private contributions.

A chapel featuring 40 chimes commemorating each of the victims will stand at the entrance.

While visitors will be able to approach the edge of the crash site, only families of the victims will be able to enter the area, which will be planted with wildflowers.